Preventing violent Islamic radicalization: experimental evidence on anti-social behavior

Pedro Vicente and Ines Vilela

NOVAFRICA Working Paper Series from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics, NOVAFRICA

Abstract: Violence perpetrated by radicalized Muslims is a major problem around the world. We collaborated with the main Islamic authority in Mozambique, which sponsored two randomized interventions to prevent violence related to youth radicalization: a religious campaign against extremist views of Islam, targeting change in beliefs; and a training module on entrepreneurship and employment, aiming to increase the opportunity cost of conflict. Our measurement focuses on anti-social behavior in a Joy-of-destruction lab game. We find that only the religious treatment decreased the propensity to destroy payoffs of others. Consistently, surveys show increased trust in state and decreased support for extremism.

Keywords: Islamic radicalization; violence; conflict; political economy; experiment; joy-of-destruction game; Mozambique; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 O55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-isf
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://novafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/2008.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:unl:novafr:wp2008

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NOVAFRICA Working Paper Series from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics, NOVAFRICA Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Susana Lopes ().